Friday, December 7, 2012

Is it chicken, or does it taste like chicken?

I've quickly realized I never mastered EnglAsian. Spanglish, no problemo. Franglais, sexy. English with a slavic twist, second nature. But English with a heavy Asian accent isn't something I've had a lot of exposure to so I'm finding myself saying "Sorry, could you repeat that?" a lot. This is the reason I ate stomach and intestines as my first meal in SE Asia.

I hadn't eaten in over 16 hours and was starving but I wanted my first meal to be epic. I'm pretty sure food is 85% of the reason I am here. So I started my search for the Golden Mile Food Center. I'm terrible with directions and almost gave up but I finally found it! I spent the next 10 minutes slowly walking past about 20 different stalls until I found a picture of the perfect dish, loaded with lots of veggies. It was also the only picture that didn't have a name associated with it. 

I placed the order and the lady said something to me I didn't understand. I asked her what was in it, chicken? She tilted her head to the side with an inquisitive look and gave me a slow nod, repeating what she had said before. I still didn't understand what she said so I returned her slow nod and sat down. When she brought out the food I tried one more time. "What is in this?" "Stomach and intestines," she said while rubbing her belly. Ah, third time and sign language is the charm. 

What I decided was the intestines wasn't quite as good as what I decided was the stomach but the dish was pretty delicious. Does anyone happen to know if the brown jalapeno looking thing (top, center of pic) is intestine or stomach?

-Kim





3 comments:

  1. Kim, when you inevitably get some serious traveler's diarrhea, don't forget how to make that emergency electrolyte drink.

    Did you get business class?

    I'm very excited for you! - Joe

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  2. Please eat allllll the intestines before I get there.

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  3. Definitely intestines. I did eat those a lot when I grow up. It taste a lot better if it cook with egg and rice wine :). -- Swandi foodie.

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